to complain about the state of the school lunches?

[supermaje]

I’m genuinely torn about whether I’m being a bit precious here, so tell me straight. My DC’s (8 and 10) primary school lunches are, frankly, shocking. They come home starving most days because the portions are tiny, and the food sounds grim. Yesterday was “pizza” which apparently was a single slice of bread with a smattering of cheese and a bit of tomato paste. That’s not pizza, is it?! It’s toast.

They also regularly run out of options by the time the last sitting gets served, so my youngest ends up with whatever’s left, which is often jacket potatoes for the third time that week. He’s so fed up he’s asked me to start making packed lunches again.

I get that budgets are tight and schools are under pressure, but for £2.50 a day, I’d expect them to at least get a decent, filling meal. When I mentioned it casually to a teacher at pick-up, they said something like, “Oh, it’s not the worst we’ve seen!” which made me think they know it’s rubbish too but aren’t doing anything about it.

Would I be unreasonable to raise it properly with the school? I don’t want to be that parent, but surely they should be offering better meals than this? Or is this just how it is everywhere now? I don’t want to kick up a fuss if this is standard and everyone else is just putting up with it.

(And yes, I’ve seen the menu they send home. It all looks great on paper. It’s just the reality that’s dire!)

Thoughts?

At the school I work in meals are definitely much better since changing catering company last summer. Everything is cooked from scratch every day, mains and desserts, except fishfingers and sausages and a couple of vegetarian options. The cakes and biscuits are variable and baked with oil not butter but fresh eggs and less sugar so not bad. There is always a selection of fresh chopped fruit like melon and pineapple and freshly baked bread and salad too. The kitchen staff will do their best to give larger portions to the older kids in spite of government saying they should be same size from 4-11 but as food is ordered in advance and carefully monitored for waste it’s not always easy. Jacket potatoes are always available with a couple of toppings but no butter so parents who order a plain jacket, it really is just a potato and a bit of veg.
Generally it’s ok and portions seem small because we’re so used to eating a lot these days. I suspect a fair few kids don’t see a lot of homemade (albeit in bulk) food these days.

I used to be a TA and lunchtime supervisor in a primary school. Some meals were OK, some were dreadful. Pizza was one of the worst. A massive square base, sliced into 20 tiny portions. The corners were always burnt with hardly any topping so you were unlucky if that was your portion. My kids went to a different school but used the same provider. They had a packed lunch!

I find it shocking but £2.50 is so cheap!
My children go to school in France we are charged on a sliding scale for canteen depending on parents earnings. We pay 7€ a day for a three course meal. The highest charge is 9€ and lowest 1€. The food is often organic and locally sourced and always balanced. I’ve never seen pizza on the menu, that’s really poor form.

I worked in my youngest son's school kitchen for a short while, one day (his class were always last in for some reason) they had run out of the protein part of the meal (meat or fish fingers) so they were offered grated cheese. Grated cheese, boiled potatoes and mixed veg.

Disgraceful. He had sandwiches after that.

How do people know what food their child is eating? I've never seen the food as I've never been in at lunchtime, and we get zero feedback from teachers about this

They vary so much between schools. I do supply teaching and I can see a meal in one school and the same meal in another school and they are completely different. For example one of the meals in our LEA is roast pork, roast potatoes, carrots and green beans.

In some schools they are making the food from ingredients. Roasting pieces meat, peeling potatoes etc. Then in others they are using that round cylinder of what was probably meat once. And tipping out some tinned carrots.

When ds3 was at primary I volunteered and one of the duties was monitoring the dining hall at lunchtime. The school dinners were generally very good, all cooked on the premises, plenty of choices and extra fruit and bread if required. The teacher and volunteers got a free lunch. There was still a lot of waste though.

Sometimes the school can’t win though. Our old headmistress introduced different meals from around the world and loads of parents complained that their little Tarquins didn't like it.

Do contact the school about it certainly. But if you don't want to be that parent then my suggestion is that you do raise it with the school, but do so in a way that shows you're not one of those parents. Start by acknowledging that budgets are tight and by stating that you're interested to "find out more about the provision of school meals". Don't condescend with lots of stuff about the importance of nutrition (they already know that) or obviously anything about your precious little darlings (they're all precious), and most of all, don't go in all guns blazing.

Write to the Head Teacher and to the Chair of Governors, asking that it be brought to the attention of whoever on their board deals with Facilities/Resources, or whatever they happen to call it at your school. You'll likely find that they're so pleased someone has taken an interest expressed in a grown-up and reasonable manner they might actually engage in a meaningful conversation about it. For example, the governor should be able to explain the selection and evaluation process. They might invite you to try the food, but as was suggested elsewhere, it's possible though actually not hugely likely that they might go the extra mile if they know they have a visitor coming to try the food, so you could discuss the idea of it being on a previously unspecified date.

Many schools use outside firms and because it's a pretty competitive industry with such slim margins they're likely to be willing to engage in proper dialogue about it.

In general I'd say there is more to it than meets the eye, but if you follow the above suggestions you might gain more understanding and be able to be a positive influence.

My kids school get them through a large provider and it’s on a 3 weekly rotating menu. They choose from 3 options in the morning so they know how many are needed.

Both kids like the vast majority of food served and neither come home starving - they take a piece of fruit each day for a snack.

I work in ed and in schools where there are far higher numbers of pupils affected by deprivation than the average. I've lost count of the number of times I've taken photos of the food served and complained, mainly about portion size for growing teens (many of whom will be having their only hot and in some cases the only decent meal of the day) but also the sheer crap and just how rank and bland and lacking in nutrition it looked. It seemed disrespectful to me, especially when I saw the colourful and balanced looking buffets the kitchen staff were able to put on for special guests. My DC will likely have packed lunches when the time comes unless their school does things really well. The menus often look the part.

Ours is shocking. I raised this with the council's nutritionist who arranged some information session and taster session. I don't know what was worse - the food I tasted, or what the nutritionist said. Since then, we've been doing packed lunches.

Of that £2.50, the money allocated to provide the meal is only about 80p. The rest of it goes on staffing, equipment, maintenance, gas, electricity, water etc. The school meal service has to be self-funding - there is no funding to subsidise it. In fact, I am a governor of an infant school and we have to provide free school meals to all our children (under the national UFSM initiative). The funding we get for this from the government is less per child than what we are charged so the difference has to come out of the main school budget 😡

In lockdown I bought my DC both a thermos food flask that has 2 sections. I just made a bit extra of whatever we had the night before and put it in the thermos. They loved it. I actually got a bit of stick because some of the kids went home saying they wanted a hot meal and they messaged me asking me where I bought the flask 😝

It is shocking what they feed our DC and then they moan we are all unhealthy.

Could I also also where you bought the flask please? 😂

School meals were pretty dire almost 20 years ago, tiny quantities of poor quality food served on plastic trays. I briefly worked in a school kitchen and was shocked, especially as this was after the Jamie Oliver campaign.
The problem is that most parents never actually see the standards. They may sound nice but the reality is very different.
You've only to look at the ingredients in food supplied by the likes of Brakes etc, upf galore, hardly what we should be aspiring to feed our children.

This. The children should still be given a decent meal in the Evening. I saw so much waste, when I worked in a school at lunch time. The amount that the children were allowed to throw away was outrageous.

£2.50 a day actually doesn't go very far anymore for households. It is the same in schools.

Our school meals also are quite 'small' to how they used to be. But every time caterers raise the prices, all hell breaks lose with parents, so rate increases are minimal and not keeping up with what it actually costs to provide more food.. Caterers can't win, to be fair.

I agree with you in theory, but the reality is, teachers can't force children to eat the food in front of them. Even if they chose it. They can only tell parents that their children aren't actually eating the food.

Why are school dinners so crap nowadays? When I was at school they weren't bad at all.

They are awful. Genuinely. Im a teacher and utterly shocked at the standard

They were horrible when I was a child a very long time ago. Some time in between then and now they weren't too bad but have clearly gone downhill.

They were utterly dreadful at both the state primary and secondary I attended (late 1990s-2000s). They were outsourced to the cheapest catering companies possible, so the quality and variety was dire. It was only when I started attending the private school, which employed their own chefs who prepared and cooked every meal on site with food quality ingredients, that I found school meals could actually be nice.

It's absolutely shameful that children in this country are fed such utter shite, especially those for whom it will be the main/sole meal of the day.

packed lunch it is then!

I did some volunteering in my kids school and noticed how small the portions were for the ks2 children. My kids were hungry after school too, they often forgot to get salad and bread after they had sat down (and not allowed to get up after sitting). I just give them packups now. Which is a shame because I think sharing a communal meal is good for children socially. My kids can be picky eaters and are more likely to eat food they don't like much if its a shared meal. I think the schools are having to offer too much choice which must cost a lot. They offer a main meal/vegetarian meal and baked potato option for £2.50. I think schools should cook one meal well and if you can't have it then bring a packup.